The Mark of Athena
by PJO's-fanatic
Summary: The long awaited arrival of the Greeks are here. But, will this new alliance strengthen the demigods or threaten to tear them apart on an endeavor they can't afford to fail.
1. Chapter 1

**1**

**Underworld Hath No Fury Like A Child Of Aphrodite**

The sight was colossal. It would have sent to his knees. Luckily, he was leaning against the rail of the vessel, so he remained standing.

Camp Jupiter looked the same. Exactly the same. There were the minimal differences, of course. The fortresses on the battlefield were different. Many were completely burned into the ground from the battle. Dust was everywhere, the remains of a thousand monsters scattered over the ground. There was an uncustomary absence of people sprinting all across the campus, made up for by the crowd of people spilling quickly from the senate complex that hadn't moved an inch. But the city was still there, glittering in the background like only a Roman capital could. The barracks sat in their correct location; the stables and forge hadn't miraculously disappeared. The temples of the gods stood in all their magnificence across the lake. And the Little Tiber still flowed straight through the valley, separating the nation of tomorrow from Rome.

"Are you okay?"

Jason jumped. Piper stood next to him on the deck, her eyes sparkling with concern. Even negative emotions were cute on her face, with her gaze. Blotting away those unhelpful thoughts, he realized her concern was warranted. He was gripping the iron guardrail of the _Argo II_ with white knuckles. He could tell his face was flushed. He probably looked quite sickly.

With effort, he pried his hands from the metal. "Yeah. I guess… I thought it would be different."

"Is it coming back to you now?" Piper asked. She sidled up alongside him, leaning against the rail. Her hair was unbraided today, and fell like a thin veil on either side of her face. Jason looked away again before he could become enamored.

"Like it never left." He raised a hand to block the sun, and stared down at the valley. "I remember everything… every tree, every rock, every temple across that lake… I memorized every detail. Hard to believe I'd forget it."

Even as he spoke, the gravity beneath their feet shifted. Leo must have been at the helm, because it was soft enough to keep them on their feet. The ship's bow made a gradual turn towards the ground. The landing sequence had begun.

Jason sighed. "I've been getting ready for this day for half a year. I've been doing everything I can to make myself remember so I wouldn't mess up… I don't know the first thing I'm going to say to these people."

"These are your friends," Piper replied. "They know you. They want to see you, too."

"I feel like I'm about to have someone introduce me to their old friends. Except I'm also the one who's doing the introducing." Jason absent-mindedly pulled lvlivs from his pocket, turning it over and over in his right hand as the _Argo II_banked towards the Earth. _Towards Gaea._

Piper glanced at him, and didn't look away. Carefully, as if she were thinking over her actions tenfold before making them, she reached over and took his hand, closing over the coin as she did. "We're with you, Jason. You're not doing this alone, and we won't let you if you try."

He didn't hear charmspeak on her voice, but she didn't need it anyway. The moment she started talking his confidence soared through the roof. That was the problem for him with Piper. It took all of two words from her to make him feel like a general of Ancient Rome.

For six months, Jason had resisted the urge to tackle her whenever their eyes met, or their hands brushed, or her laugh echoed throughout the room. Throughout his mind. Piper McLean was intoxicating, and Jason Grace was stricken. There were only a few very important things keeping him from jumping her, but even that line was so thin that his toes had nearly skirted over it on plenty a number of occasions.

Except for, you know, that one of those things was that he was afraid that the earth would swallow him whole if he tackled Piper to it.

Gaea was waking; the ancient entity of nature, the mother of _everything_. Literally. Gaea had been asleep for millennia, silently following nature's course, ever since her giants had been destroyed at the hands of the combined might of gods and demigods back in the age of Ancient Greece. The second defeat of the Titans of the previous summer, now nearly a year beforehand, had stirred the ancient mother in her slumber and reawakened the anger that had lied dormant for eons. Now the dame of the gods was back with a vengeance, and she was determined to succeed where her giants had failed the first time around. Only this time she was more powerful than ever. And the gods and demigods, even united, might not have the power to stop her. The earth under their own feet was their enemy.

And there was Reyna. Yeah, Reyna was another reason.

Jason's memories had definitely come back, and he remembered it all. How he had been intimidated by her. Impressed by her raw charisma. Destroyed by her skill with weaponry. Intrigued by her surprising and delving intellect. Utterly surprised when she seemed to befriend him, even more so when she started to smile at him. Overjoyed when she supported him for praetor.

Yes. Between Reyna and Piper, Jason was torn and confused, indeed.

"Jason."

He jumped again. Piper let go of his hand instantly. Annabeth stood behind them, at a respectful distance, speaking as if she did not want to intrude. Despite his confusion, Jason wished Piper hadn't let go.

He turned to face the daughter of Athena, goddess of wisdom. She was pale, too, at least as much as Jason. Her blonde hair was pulled back from her face, wrapped in a ponytail. She had one hand gripping the hilt of the Celestial bronze knife on her belt. The expression on her face told Jason everything he needed to know about her mental state; she was nervous and excited at the same time. If it all went right today, she would be reunited with Percy Jackson—her boyfriend of nearly a year. That was, of course, accounting for the eight months that he had been ripped from her life, the same as Jason had been ripped from his.

For the first time, Jason thought about Percy living in the Roman camp. He'd spent six months thinking about nothing but getting back to here—past the first moments, when he had to greet everybody, he hadn't thought about what came next. He hadn't considered Percy at all… he wondered, for the first time, if maybe Percy had a place in this Roman camp the same as Jason had at Camp Half-Blood. He wondered if maybe Percy had found a Pip—if Percy had found someone special in eight months of memory loss.

No wonder Annabeth was nervous.

"Leo says we'll be on the ground in three minutes. You're up, hero. You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Jason replied, realizing that he was quite not fine. He tried not to look at Piper, but his head betrayed him and turned sideways. The color in her eyes showed him that she knew exactly how he felt. He looked away quickly. "I'm good. Let's go."

He led the way, the two girls trailing in his wake. He climbed the steep staircase to the deck where Leo stood at the ship's wheel, a dozen different control systems and readouts arrayed around him, complete with cupholder and mini-fridge. His friend manned the wheel with a giant grin on his face, occasionally yelling an order to the couple dozen demigods rushing across the ship to prepare for landing.

Jason took up a stance beyond his control consoles, looking down at the ground as it loomed closer and closer over the side of the vessel. The crowd spilling from the Senate had turned into a mob pooling from every building of the camp. Even a number of bodies began to pour out of the distant city. They were congregating in the field Leo was aiming for, intelligently leaving a great berth of space for the _Argo II_to ease into. Something stood out to Jason about their formation, but it took him a second for the familiar stance of the distant figures to click in his mind…

"Annabeth, they're armed," he said, turning to face her as she stepped up next to him. Piper and Clarisse La Rue, daughter of Ares and declared weaponsmaster of the vessel, stepped up with her. "They're in battle formation."

Clarisse swore and leaped back off the bridge, to the main deck and began shouting out for battle positions before Jason could stop her.

Annabeth was calmer; Jason had noticed that she usually waited for all the details before she began to freak out. "Will they attack?"

"I don't know," Jason replied, moving to the side of the ship, trying to see as much as he could as they moved closer to the Roman formation. "They're not necessarily in an aggressive stance, but they're definitely ready to fight."

"If they wanted to, wouldn't they already have attacked?" Piper asked.

Jason bit his lip. "Romans have never exactly had to fight a lot of winged prey. It's not like they have five million trebuchets ready to train on us right now. Most of their battles were fought on the ground, and they always have the upper hand. We can't know what they want unless they walk to us."

"Should I level out?" Leo asked. The son of Hephaestus had a steady grip on the wheel, another on the thruster controls, ready to shoot them out of descent at his word. "If I don't do it now, dude, I'll have to land and push off again to get us out. Now or never."

Annabeth looked to Jason, too. It was his decision. Down on the deck, Clarisse was barking the Greeks into their posts, at the dozen ballistas and crossbow stations spread across and belowdecks. He'd seen this picture too many times—it wasn't a time for war. If the Romans wanted a fight, if he had anything to say about it, they sure weren't going to get one. He had come too far to watch it come to fighting.

"Stand down," he said, stepping back up to the wheel, directly next to Leo. "Stand down!" His voice was powerful—he was the son of Jupiter. Everyone on the deck below turned and looked up at him, even Clarisse. "We're not here to fight them! Remain at your stations, but stand down!"

"We're outnumbered a hundred to one!" Clarisse shouted back, a scowl darkening her already dark expression. "If we're not ready they're going to storm us and make this a massacre without losing a single man!"

"I think I'm with her, bro," Leo said, holding the ship steady in the sky. "I don't wanna wake up on the wrong side of my spear tomorrow morning, and this is looking like a one-way ticket. This ship packs a pop, but I'm fresh out of thousand-person-wield fireballs…"

"They're not going to attack," Jason replied, his eyes still on the mass below, that, while appearing perfectly ready to rush into combat, remained stationary on the ground. A few people, still too distant to identify, had moved out in front of the mass and stood together. "Leo, you're going to land us and then I'm going to get off. Only me. You're going to keep the ship hot and blast off the instant you think they might be up to a spar. But if they wanted to attack, my gut tells me they would have already found a way. Just keep Clarisse away from the ballistas."

Leo nodded his assent, but he still glanced at Annabeth before turning the ship again towards the ground. The daughter of Athena herself took a long moment to hold skeptical eye contact with Jason before leaping down the steps to the main deck quickly and ordering everyone to stand down. Piper stepped closer to him and crossed her arms; the radiant concern was back.

"Are you sure you should go alone?" she murmured, so hopefully only Jason could hear her words.

"Anyone else might make them think I'm just issuing a warning for battle," he replied, trying to placate her with his warmest smile. "Don't worry. They know me, and I know them. It'll all be fine."

"The first time I got this thing out and we're trying to prevent war with Rome," Leo groaned. "Firing reverse thrusters."

The ship lurched gently below their feet, rapidly decelerating as their altitude dropped steeply. With a gilt Jason could only describe as fun, as if his friend was savoring the departing ability to control this mechanical masterpiece, Leo swooped the giant _Argo II_into the clearing the Romans had rimmed. The cries of surprise and shock—and probably a substantial few of fear—from the crowd rose around them now, and Jason could feel his heartbeat rising by the second.

"If this thing goes _Titanic_ on its maiden voyage, I gotta tell you, it's not going to be pretty between you and me, Jason," Leo muttered, his focus on the ship.

They crested over the ground, close enough that Jason could pick out the blades of grass sweeping in the gust from the ship. Faces were visible now, less than fifty yards from the ship. There were five humans standing forward of the Roman legion, alongside the largest dog Jason had ever seen, an emaciated creature Jason recognized as a harpy, and a small male Cyclops, who, although Jason had never met him and judging by the unfazed nature of the Romans around him, must have been Percy's half-brother Tyson, who had been relentlessly searching for the son of Poseidon for the past six months. Octavian, the augur of the Romans, stood removed from the other humans, wearing a scowl that could have rivaled Clarisse's. Next to him stood a trio, a boy who Jason recognized from Annabeth's pictures and the camp's description as Percy Jackson, who had his arms around Jason's found Fifth Cohort friend Hazel Levesque and a strangely disproportionate boy whom Jason didn't know. The fifth and final member of the waiting party was Reyna. She stood proud and tall as she ever did, despite the toga that she was sporting with obvious distaste. Somehow the aura she projected still cause Jason's blood to suddenly run hot through his veins, even from fifty yards away.

Piper gripped his hand from where she stood next to him. Not helping.

With a grunt of effort and approval, Leo eased the _Argo II_to touch down to the ground, bobbing once and sitting comfortably, as if rocking through a wave on the ocean. Jason smiled in a way that came out sickly at Leo and clapped him on the shoulder, murmuring congratulations.

He jumped down the staircase three at a time, slamming to the deck with the eyes of everyone onboard trained right on him. Only Annabeth didn't look to him, for her gaze was permanently glued to the face of Percy Jackson. If it was possible for her face to be any whiter than it had been before… it was. He placed a reassuring hand briefly on her arm as he passed.

The gears creaked into motion below and the metal of the ship groaned to life as Leo engaged the ramp. It slid out from the hull of the vessel and melded into a staircase, extending and lowering until it touched the ground.

Jason watched a ripple of unease and tension flash through the Roman battalions like a wave. He sighed and simultaneously sucked in a deep breath as he carefully mounted the top step.

"Showtime."

Percy Jackson was suddenly aware that his heart rate was accelerating.

He didn't know why. He knew the people around him. Behind him. He knew the people on the vessel ahead of him. The oath he had put on his life not five minutes before hand wasn't tearing away at his chest, because he knew he was right; Jason Grace was on this ship, and so was Annabeth.

Was it his imagination, or was there a head of blonde hair rushing over the deck as the ship eased towards the ground?

As if to voice his anxiety, Frank saved him the trouble. "I'm nervous and I don't know why."

He couldn't help it. Percy laughed, knocking Frank on the side of his shoulder to show he wasn't making fun. "It's okay. I am, too. And _I_have no reason to be. These are my friends."

"What if they don't like me?" Frank added.

"Hush," Hazel said from under Percy's other arm. Her eyes were glowing as she watched the ship, but her expression didn't appear any more comfortable than either of theirs. "It's impossible not to like you. Shut up and be yourself."

"How can I be myself if I shut up?"

Tyson was jumping up and down, just like Percy's heart. The ship had entered its final descent, and was skirting the edges of the trees ending the clearing before setting down. The power off the engines and the wake of air from the ship billowed into the formations of Roman warriors behind them, trying to throw the seasoned soldiers off balance.

The ship really was a sight. It had a single mast, which probably wasn't even necessary, for three giant engines sprouted from the back and threw off a fiery glow to the surrounding forest. The hull was solid metal, and sprouted a number of armaments and weapons ranging from a mounted crossbow to something that looked like a nuclear missile. The dragon head attached the bow was moving, its gaze traversing the entire legion. The _Argo II_was a battleship, but none of its weapons were trained on the Romans.

Percy glanced over Hazel's head, where Octavian looked quite cross as he glared daggers and atomic celestial warheads at the vessel. "See?" the son of Poseidon said to the augur, earning the death glare in turn. "They didn't come to fight. They're my friends, and they've come in wartime to make peace."

"Jason." Reyna's voice wasn't steady. "Jason is on the ship. I saw him."

Percy smiled at her, though her eyes were elsewhere. "He wouldn't just leave you, would he?"

"I never thought I'd see him again," Hazel whispered next to him.

The _Argo II_floated like a cloud to the earth, where it touched down in the grass. The engines powered down in the rush of a tornado, and from over the side of the deck appeared two dozen gawking faces. Demigod faces. Greek demigod faces. The legion of Roman demigods stared back as if their visitors were made of Imperial gold, but Percy was running across them, naming them off in his head. He remembered every one. Travis Stoll. Will Solace. Clarisse

From the side of the ship an ark of metal split from the hull. It rotated outwards and began to morph, shapes sliding out of the arm in construction precision that reminded Percy of Annabeth.

The ark settled itself into a ramp, which pivoted and eased to set down in the grass as lightly as the ship. A single boy appeared at the top of the ramp, and, alone, began to walk down.

Percy had never seen him before, but he knew immediately who he was. He walked with the gait of someone who knew everyone was watching and resented the attention. His face was strong and his skin weathered. He was wearing an orange Camp Half-Blood t-shirt, but on his arm Percy could identify an outline of the tattoo identical to the one now inscribed on his own. His arms were more muscular than Percy's own, but he wore no sword and was carrying no other weapon.

Jason Grace. Son of Jupiter.

Percy's arms fell from around the shoulders of his friends, and as Jason Grace reached the base of the ramp Percy stepped out from the group and began to walk forward, across the grass, towards the former praetor of the Twelfth Legion.

They stopped when they were about three paces from each other. Hundreds of eyes were on the pair of them.

"Hi," Percy said. "I'm Percy."

Jason grinned. "I'm Jason."

There was a pause. "Did you come to kill us?" Percy asked.

"No," Jason replied. "Are you formed up to massacre us?"

"Nope."

Jason held out his hand. "Sounds to me like you and I are going to get along just fine."

Percy took the hand and shook it. "I got your eagle back, by the way."

"What?"

Percy took Jason by the wrist and lifted their arms into the air. Turning to the legion, he cried out at the top of his lungs. "Demigods of Rome! I return to you Praetor Jason, son of Jupiter!"

The simultaneous uproar from the crowd nearly knocked the _Argo II_over. The crowd's weapons dropped in one motion and they all surged forward towards Jason. A wall of Romans got to them at the same time, dozens of hands reaching to touch their lost hero. Percy barely had time to introduce Frank before he was swept away by the crowd, leaving a grinning Jason to his own devices in the middle of the pack.

He swarmed out to the edge closest to the ship, where the crew was just beginning to gingerly step down the ramp. Romans were still eyeing them warily, but a courageous few had even moved forward and were stabbing swords into the ground to offer their hands. Unfortunately, the vast majority barely got a polite hello before they made a beeline right for Percy.

The foremost was a boy who had the legs of a goat. Grover slammed into Percy with a bear hug that would have made the son of Poseidon laugh had he any breath left in his body.

"Dude!" Grover cried. "Percy, I missed you! I went everywhere, man, I looked everywhere. And when I tell you not to move, what do you do? You freaking move. You _never_ do what I tell you to."

"I had to, G-man, I had to," Percy replied heartily, slapping the satyr on the arm happily. "World in peril, monsters coming from everywhere, same old, same old. You know how it is."

The conversation was interrupted by Travis and Connor Stoll, a limping and bandaged Jake Mason but who looked _much_ better than the last time Percy had seen him, and Chris Rodriguez.

No sooner had he started to catch up, however, did an especially penetrating voice meet Percy's ears. His heart melted. His body froze.

"Hi?"

She stood at a few arms' lengths, her hair tied back and her expression disbelieving. Her gray eyes crackled with emotion, her mouth twisted in concentration. She was the most beautiful thing Percy had ever seen and the way she was glaring at him had him somewhere between terrified for his life and turned on.

"Hi?" Annabeth repeated. "I'm Percy? You had eight months to think about it and that's all you came up with?"

Percy blinked, and spread his arms in a helpless gesture. "You can clean the kelp out of my head later."

Then she was in his arms, and Percy forgot everything else. He forgot about the Roman legion, about his Greek friends, about Jason Grace, and about the fact that Gaea wanted to kill them all. His only thoughts were for Annabeth Chase, the girl who was in his arms and clinging to him as if he might disappear any second.

To be fair, it was a distinct possibility.

"I missed you, Seaweed Brain," she murmured into his ear. She was a good five inches off the ground, and making no attempt to return to it. To Percy's shock, she sounded close to tears.

"I was lost without you, Wise Girl," he replied. It was the truth. He sucked in her scent, the smell of flower petals flattened with fresh paper and shampoo of mist. Ocean mist. Man, he missed her _so much._

She slowly relinquished her hold and he set her on the ground. Looking up at him, she said, "You grew."

"Yeah. I have." He hadn't realized it, but he could now see it was true. She used to look straight at his nose; now she looked straight at his lips. Like she was doing right now. Intently. "I guess a lot happens in eight months."

He realized how stupid of a sensitive thing to say that was exactly three seconds later, but was thankful when her only response was to grab his hand and thread their fingers through each other, moving to her side as two individuals he had only seen in his prophetic dreams stepped down the ladder.

The first was a short, dark-haired boy who looked as mischievous as a child of Apollo. He wore a sleeveless, torn shirt and holey jeans and had the largest, strangest belt Percy had ever seen wrapped around his waist. His arms were covered in dirt, but the grin on his face was friendly.

"Percy," Annabeth said, "this is Leo Valdez, son of Hephaestus. He built the _Argo II._Nyssa says he's the most talented mechanic and metalworker she's ever seen."

"Well, not meaning to brag," Leo said, puffing out his chest in mock pride and arrogance. He reached out his hand to Percy to shake. Percy gripped it with the hand Annabeth wasn't holding, but instantly steam shot out of their grip.

Leo let go like his hand was on fire. It took a full second for Percy to realize it was. "Dude!"

The Latino demigod glanced at it and raised his eyebrows, apparently unfazed, glancing back at Percy quick. "Dude! That's sick! Demigod of water plus demigod of fire equals steam. Bad. Ass."

"Leo inherited the gift of pyrokinesis from his father," Annabeth explained under her voice, taking the opportunity to lean in as close to Percy as she physically could. "Very rare."

"You're telling me," Percy said. "That's freaking sweet. So you don't, like, burn or anything?"

With his own eyes, Percy watched the flame seemingly extinguish itself on Leo's hand, and watched the boy flex his hand, showing soft, unblemished skin. "When I was three, Hera threw me into a fire just to see if I would live. Who knew. True story."

As Percy tried to wrap his mind around this quick divulgence of history, the second newcomer, a pleasant-looking girl, stepped forward. "Percy," Annabeth said, "this is Piper McLean, daughter of Aphrodite."

Percy blinked, obviously having misheard. There was _no_way this was a daughter of Aphrodite. She was effortlessly pretty, there wasn't doubt there, but her hair was curled and twisted like a hurricane and tossed carelessly around her face. There was absolutely no makeup applied around her eyes. Zilch. Nada. Jupiterian amounts of negative mascara._Nothing_. Her clothes were things no daughter of Aphrodite would _ever_ be caught dead wearing: She had on jeans over strangely colored socks, tucked into _sneakers_, topped off by a snowboarding jacket. A long dagger was strapped to her waist. Nothing matched. It was a love goddess' nightmare.

Percy was aware his jaw was slammed open as he shook the girls' hand. "I'm sorry, daughter of who?"

"Yeah," Piper McLean replied, nodding with pursed lips. "You heard right."

Percy abruptly became aware of how stupid he must have been looking, and frantically stuttered. "I-I'm sorry. I didn't think… it's not that your… I mean… you just, I've never met a daughter—or a _son_—of Aphrodite that wasn't cutthroat about wearing designer brands and checking their hair every five seconds." He checked over his shoulder, only just realizing that Aphrodite children might have been standing right next to him. Thankfully, there were none.

"It's all right," Piper replied. "I get that a lot."

Percy was saved the embarrassment of responding when Frank and Hazel approached, a combined look of apprehension and excitement on their faces. Percy immediately beckoned them closer and turned Annabeth so she and the others were facing his Roman friends. "Leo, Piper, Annabeth, I'd like you to meet Hazel Levesque, daughter of Pluto, and Frank Zhang, son of Mars."

There was a great exchange of colorful smiles and "Hi!"s. Percy felt overjoyed that he had such welcoming friends. He was glad he hadn't chosen to introduce then to Clarisse with this group.

Hazel beamed at Annabeth. "You're so lucky. Percy's an amazing person." Percy noticed her move closer to Frank as she said this. As if to reassure him that she wasn't jealous of the daughter of Athena in the slightest.

Annabeth mirrored the motion nearly perfectly. "I know," she replied, making a beautiful little smirk as she spoke.

"And you two are so cute!" Piper said, touching Hazel on the arm with a beaming smile, as if she simply couldn't resist point this out. _Okay_, Percy thought. _Maybe she_is _a daughter of Aphrodite._

Frank's face turned the color of his father's temple. "Oh, we're not… I mean to say… We're not really together."

Hazel didn't say anything. She just grinned, and Percy did, as well. "We owe Percy a lot, though. He became a leader when we short one and got the eagle of the Fifth Cohort back after it had been lose for twenty years!"

"Yes. We all owe much to Percy Jackson, son of Neptune."

Reyna had approached without Percy noticing, and now stood only slightly off to the side, politely waiting to be welcomed into their proximity. Percy quickly gestured her forward, eager to finish the pleasantries so they could all speak plainly as comrades. "This is Reyna, daughter of the war goddess Bellona, praetor of the Twelfth Legion."

It was as if they had hopped from Phoenix to Alaska. Piper's glare was straight ice, Annabeth's not much better. Their welcoming eyes had warped into stone walls in milliseconds, and Percy suddenly felt as if his occupied hand was being squeezed into paste.

Leo, on the other hand, appeared to have forgotten he possessed a jaw. He would be spending the next year inventing a mechanism to dig it out of the ground…

"Hi," Annabeth said stonily, at least trying to make outward appearances of warmth. She tried to smile, clearly; to Percy it appeared to be a wince. "Jason's told me about you."

"Has he?" Reyna replied, raising an eyebrow.

"He has?" Piper blurted at virtually the same moment. "He hasn't mentioned you to me at all."

"Interesting," Reyna replied. Her smile was nicer than both of theirs, also appearing confident and powerful. "I'm sure there was nothing to tell. I have, of course, heard of you, Annabeth, daughter of Athena, from Percy. And Piper, your forthcoming has been foreseen by our augur. I have been looking forward to meeting you."

"You… have?" Piper's face betrayed perplexity. Percy's sympathy was immense.

"Of course. You are one of the Seven, are you not? Of the Great Prophecy? I have so many questions for you. We need to take time later to speak. We have very few children of Venus here, and none so powerful as you."

"I… I look forward to our talk," Piper replied meekly, still taken aback.

Reyna gave her warm smile, and then nodded to both Piper and Annabeth once more before turning away. She completely ignored Leo, who looked like he had been struck down by Zeus himself. He didn't blink or breathe again until the female Roman praetor was out of earshot.

Piper said a word Percy was sure Aphrodite approved of. "Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no no no."

"What?" Percy said frantically. He almost reached over and pulled Leo's jaw out of the earth for him.

"I can't compete with that…" Piper lamented, her voice tinged with agony. "What am I supposed to do that'll put me on the same level as her? She's _gorgeous_!"

"She is," Annabeth agreed. Her eyes were boring holes in the praetor's back. Then she looked at Percy, one eyebrow ever so slightly higher than the other. "She is quite good-looking."

"I guess so," Percy replied without thinking. The other eyebrow went up. "I mean… that is to say—she's fine, I don't know, I've never looked that way. What's wrong, Piper?"

"Jason was praetor before Hera took him, too," Piper said, her voice a mumble. "She's probably good with a sword. They probably trained together. They probably did _everything_together. Maybe they were _together_ before. Maybe they'll just take up where they left off. He's going to forget about me and go with her…"

"You're jumping to conclusions," Annabeth replied. Her eyes were now far away from Percy's, and he felt excessively stupid. "He never mentioned her to you, so she's obviously not that important. Besides, he's been staring at you for the past eight months like he can't decide whether to take you out to dinner or whisk you straight off to his room."

"I don't know," Piper replied. She sounded miserable.

"I want her," Leo said, speaking so fast that the words came out as a jumbled conglomerate. "Did you see her looking at me? I'll bet she likes a guy who's good with his hands." As if to demonstrate, he raised his arms and waved his fingers experimentally.

There was tension now, Percy knew, but at the moment he was so happy he could barely think. Annabeth was with him. She was holding his hands and still folded into his side, even if she was avoiding his gaze. His friends were here, in California, associating freely with the Roman demigods. Their future may look bleak, but for the moment, he couldn't help but let himself smile.

From the crowd, Jason looked over and gestured to him, and then, when Percy nodded, the son of Jupiter turned and began to weave his way, between and with the crowd, back towards the Senate building from which Percy had just come.

"Come on," Percy said. "I think we all have a lot to talk about."


	2. Chapter 2

**2**

**Blood of Hades, Heart of Poseidon, Wrath of Jupiter**

They would have convened in the senate with the newcomers, but Reyna had a brief discussion with Percy and Jason on arrival and they all agreed that it would be better served if their meeting weren't exactly open to public ears.

Instead, the centurions of the Cohorts, the nobles of the Amazons, the assorted praetors of the Legions and the Half-Blood camp counselors assembled in a private hall next to the dining hall, where their conversations could be undertaken without fear of unwelcome ears.

Hazel wasn't a camp counselor for the Fifth Cohort, but Frank and Percy both volleyed for her presence, and to her surprise Reyna allowed it. She felt out-of-place, as all of the others in attendance had earned their position at the table they sat around, but she reminded herself that she had escaped from the greatest female fighting force of its age single-handedly and helped to defeat the most powerful giant of all time. Looking at it through those eyes, she had more than earned her place.

The table was circular, but Reyna sat in the tallest chair. To her left and right were Jason and Percy respectfully. Annabeth Chase sat at Percy's right, followed immediately by Clarisse La Rue, Travis Stoll, Leo Valdez, Will Solace, Piper McLean, and Grover, the satyr. On Jason's left were the centurions, with Hazel sitting between Jason and Frank, who whispered briefly with Dakota as he gave her a small smile. Hylla and her officers sat across from Reyna. Octavian was deep in conversation with one of the Amazons, which made Hazel slightly uneasy. They totaled nearly thirty when seated around the same table.

At the moment, Hazel was trying her hardest not to stare at Leo Valdez. Meeting him hadn't been as much of a shock as she expected, but now the equalizer of that effect was how apprehensive she felt at the table. He was staring at the tabletop, working something in his hands, just the sort of thing Sammy would have done, completely removed from the world.

He looked just like him. Sammy could have been his twin brother—not his grandfather, or great-grandfather, or however they were related. They must be related. They had the same last name. They looked exactly the same. The only relief she had was that Leo was older, and so his voice was a little lower in frequency. That made it a lot easier to differentiate between what her heart was telling her and what her eyes were. She was having a difficult time looking away, but even when she did her gaze always turned to Frank, somewhere it_did not_ want to be when thinking about Sammy.

She was so confused. She kept telling herself that Leo Valdez, son of Hephaestus, sitting across from her, was not Sammy Valdez.

That didn't help much, though.

Thankfully for Hazel, Reyna chose that moment to call the meeting to attention. Her voice picked over the low discussions of all assembled, and every head swiveled in her direction. "It is time to begin. History hasn't seen the meeting of so many different demigods before. The Amazons, the Greeks, and the Romans sit together at this table. We're united behind a common enemy, the most ancient enemy known to men and even to the gods. It's the time to decide how we will proceed from here. Jason."

Jason cleared his throat next to Hazel. She could tell he was uneasy. He'd never liked speaking in front of people, even as their praetor. "Gaea, mother earth, is raising her army of giants from beyond the Underworld to destroy humanity and the gods and rule over the planet. Only the combined might of demigods _and_ gods together can defeat them."

"But the giant…" one of the centurions said, a Second Cohort boy Hazel wasn't familiar with. "Percy killed him near the city. There wasn't a god there that helped."

"Terminus," Percy said simply, and understanding rippled through the Roman group. To the Greeks, he hastily and summarily gave an account of the quest he, Frank, and Hazel had set upon and concluded. Hazel was gratified that he left out certain details, especially about how their escape from the Amazons was effected. "To kill Polybotes, I had the help of Terminus, the god who guards the Roman city. He wouldn't let Polybotes get into the city with his weapons, so he killed him."

"And we were able to kill Enceladus on Mt. Diablo," Jason added, "because my father answered my call and hit him with a lightning bolt." And so Hazel listened to reiteration of Jason's quest, again confined to a few short minutes. She listened as Jason depicted how he, Piper, and Leo had traveled first to Canada to meet the god of winter and then to California, where they had their showdown to save Piper's dad on Mt. Diablo.

"The giants aren't invincible," Reyna said, addressing the group as a whole. "Gaea is not invincible. But we cannot afford to be divided, or we will fall, with the rest of the world right behind us. There are even more powerful giants out there, more monsters and enemies that we have not yet seen, but who will serve the call of mother earth when it comes. When it's that time, we'll be the only things standing against their army. We need to be ready."

Hazel caught Percy glancing at Annabeth, but it wasn't an affectionate yearning for comfort. Annabeth's eyes turned to him for a second, and Hazel watched the quickest silent conversation she had ever witnessed unfold. Annabeth cleared her voice and said, "We have a high priority to reestablish open communication with the gods."

"_We_ have?"

Octavian stood, glaring at the blonde Greek demigod down the table for him. Their two gazes had enough steel in them to make a child of Vulcan drool. "_Our_priorities in this camp have never been the same as yours, and until you speak openly to us they won't become any closer. We have no pressing desire to speak with the gods. When they see it fit to reopen communication with us, they will do so. It's their will."

"We can't defeat the giants without them," Annabeth replied calmly, remaining in her seat. She didn't appear intimidated by Octavian in the slightest, and Hazel admired her for it. There was no way she could stand up to Octavian that way—not when he held her secret in his pocket, ready to expose it to the world at a moment's notice…

"But what is to say that speaking with them will matter?" Octavian argued. "We can't waste the time coordinating. What if they're ready to strike, and they're waiting for us to get to the fighting so they can rush in and finish the battle?"

"They're not," Percy said quietly, just loud enough to be heard.

"How do you know?" Hylla spoke, from down the table, her eyes boring into the son of Neptu—Poseidon, whoever.

"Because," Jason said, glancing at his Greek counterpart across the table before turning his eyes to the Amazon queen, "some of us have been in contact with them in our dreams for months. They're in as tense as situation as we are, and they're quite busy without worrying about all of us."

"Dreams?" Octavian cried. "What dreams? Whose dreams?"

"Our dreams." It took a moment for Hazel to realize that it had been Frank who had spoken. "Regular dreams. Different dreams. All sorts of dreams." He suddenly realized everyone was looking at him and stopped talking. His face turned bright red, making Hazel grin.

"My father spoke to me," Leo Valdez said. Thank the gods his voice was different… Hazel nearly flinched when she watched his lips move. "Before I built the _Argo_. To convince me who I was, 'cause I was angry and he'd never acknowledged me before. Over the past couple of months he's come and talked to me a couple times, especially if there was something about the _Argo_ I was having trouble with."

"They're watching us," Annabeth said, "but they can't actively interfere, not when they're preparing for the enemy and bickering amongst themselves. But we need them. Without them, we can't defeat _our_ enemies. And when Gaea's forces march on Olympus _they_ will need _us_."

"It's in our best interests to talk now," Jason said, "because if we wait for them to come get us, we might not be alive anymore."

Octavian, who had reclaimed his seat, grumbled. "But what of the Prophecy of Seven? Where does that tie with the gods, or is that a conflict for only demigods to fight, in which case we needn't bother reestablishing our communication?"

"On the contrary," Jason broke in, directing the attention of the room to him. "The Prophecy of Seven is the reason we need to talk to our parents. Our quest and the prophecy will only happen in conjunction with each other. We might as well make sure we know what both sides are thinking here, since this is the battle of our age."

There was a moment where everyone seemed to let everything sink in. Then, from down the table, Piper McLean spoke up, appearing unsure but sounding the most confident of them all. "The Prophecy of _Seven_... seven demigods."

"Seven demigods," Jason repeated with a nod. There was a slight twitch to him as he looked at Piper. Hazel couldn't identify it.

"Sorry for stupid questions," Piper continued, in a way that made Hazel suddenly felt that nothing Piper said could ever be stupid. The daughter of Pluto blinked, as if her head was foggy. "But who exactly are the seven? Do we know?"

Hazel knew that the daughter of Aphrodite had nailed the elephant in the room as if Hannibal had actually been standing there. All of a sudden the separate parties of demigods had suspicious eyes flashing across the table in different directions, shooting accusatory glares as if they suspected someone to suddenly leap up and declare them worshippers of Kronos. Even Reyna's eyes had suddenly glazed over, a sign Hazel had come to associate with dissociation from the moment. Or suspicion.

The few short seconds of tension were sliced clean in half by Annabeth. She cleared her voice and spoke concisely. "They have already been pointed to us. By the gods."

"What?" Octavian cried. "What do you mean?"

"The two quests," Annabeth said. "Jason's quest involved you, Piper, in part because your father had been taken but also because Gaea tried to influence you. Your value to her clearly makes you a weapon to us. And Leo... Hera chose you herself when you were young. Jason is her handpicked champion. All of you are clearly meant to be on the quest.

"And your quest, Percy, for the eagle. Mars clearly was leading Frank to a higher incentive, albeit against his will and longing. Hazel was integral to your escape from the Amazons, acquiring the trust of Arion, and locating Alcyoneus and Thanatos on the iceberg. Hera appeared to Percy, leading him across the river to the camp. Frank is unquestionably valuable, and Hazel is a daughter of Pluto. It's clear they should be included."

Annabeth said it very analytically, scientifically, not at all compassionate, but Hazel couldn't find it in herself to feel anger when the blonde, who Hazel did not know in the slightest, stuck up for her place in a quest she felt was too prestigious for any demigod to undertake.

There was still a puzzle piece that had been surreptitiously ignored, and Reyna was the first to point it out. "Your points are fair, but after that reasoning there are only six... Who is the seventh?"

For the first time that Hazel had observed, Annabeth Chase shrugged. "That's where I can't help. From the prophecy, I think we can assume that they will be the seven strongest demigods of our time. We have six of them. The last one could be any of us, though. We may not even have discovered them yet. They could still be out there."

Several people began speaking at once: Hylla, Octavian, Jason, a few centurions. Octavian's voice cut through the cacophony. "But how can we identify the seventh demigod? It seems to me that none of us can proceed until we have gathered _seven_ demigods who can partake in this quest."

"Indeed," Reyna agreed. "So, the question is begged... who's the strongest of those who remain unchosen?"

The accusing eyes were back, and they were _everywhere_. Some—Reyna, Annabeth, Octavian—maintained their outer shell of diplomacy. Others, specifically a number of Amazons and virtually all of the centurions, behind scanning the crowd of demigods in the room with menace, as if suddenly calculating the moves of their opponents. Or victims.

Reyna undoubtedly detected the hostility in the room, and instantly added, "Or if they aren't here, which is just as likely, how are we to find them? The other six were pointed to us by the gods. Will the seventh be identified with the same technique?"

"All the more reason to reestablish our communications with the gods," Annabeth continued. "Perhaps they could give some insight on the matter, if they won't just outright tell us who it is. Either way, it can't hurt to be able to talk to them."

"Okay," Reyna said. "So just how do we propose we get their attention?"

"I'm not sure," Annabeth replied easily, "but it's clear that not all of the gods are so happy about not talking to their kids. Mars defied Zeus-slash-Jupiter by coming to claim Frank personally. Hera's done it on many occasions over the past few months. Artemis communicates in secret with her hunters all of the time. It's not a matter of convincing the gods to talk to us. It's a matter of convincing Zeus to hear us out and help us."

"So what should we do?" Leo said. This time, Hazel did flinch. "Build a giant lightning bolt, paint '_Hey, listen to your kids!_' on the side, and fire it at the sky?"

"Something a little subtler, I'd think," Jason answered. "Not that I've ever spoken to Jupiter before. Not that I'd know what he likes or respects."

"You've never spoken with Jupiter?" Percy repeated. His voice betrayed just how surprised he was by this, so the shocked look on his face need not have existed.

"No. You've talked with Poseidon before?"

"Yeah," Percy replied, as if he'd thought it was obvious. "Bunch of times. All the time, before... you know... whoosh, '_we're sorry, your call did not go through_'."

Hazel remembered the brief moments when Jason's anger shot across his face before he wisely contained it. This was one of those moments, where it quickly ran through his features until it quickly jumped behind a mask. "Roman demigods don't always meet their parents before they come to camp. Or afterward, for that matter. I'm the only son of Jupiter to come along in nearly a century, so it wasn't considered strange when he didn't come down and shower me with blessings. This isn't helping-what about Thalia? She probably knows a lot more about our father than I do."

"She doesn't have the greatest relationship with Zeus," Annabeth said. "I don't think she'd even agree to try talking to him. It would be difficult to get her talking _about_ him."

"Where does that leave us?" Percy asked, before Jason had the chance to.

"I don't know," Annabeth answered honestly, glancing at her boyfriend briefly, before looking away quickly. Her eyes danced towards the ceiling, as far away from Percy's as possible. Hazel was no daughter of Venus, but she detected the friction there, and from the look on Percy's face he had no idea where it had come from.

Reyna's eyes had also glided between them almost without pausing, but now she returned her glare to the group and hastened to change the subject before they become unruly again. "Speaking with the gods or not, we will eventually need to make our move. The giants won't wait forever to wage this war, and I think that we should make our attack on them before they can reach their peak strength."

"That's why we came," Piper murmurred, loud enough that the whole table could hear but not to be a disturbing interruption to the conversation.

Jason continued for her. "According to Chiron, the counselor at Camp Half-Blood, the strength of the giants, and therefore their rising place, will be where theirs and Gaea's powers are at their strongest. At the very roots of their creation."

If it had occurred to any of her Roman comrades, they didn't show it or voice it. It was left to Hazel to mutter the answer as it landed in her head like a long-distance cannonball. "Olympus. The originial Olympus."

Jason nodded, smiling at her. "In Greece. That's where we're going, where we'll make our stand against Gaea once and for all."

"How do we plan to do that?" Octavian demanded. His voice was becoming quite more annoying than it had been before. "How do you plan to conquer mother earth herself? Stab the ground until it crumbles away beneath your feet?"

"I plan on doing it however it can be done," Jason retorted. The flash behind his eyes was all the window someone needed to identify his furious emotions. "I'll figure something out. I sure as hell can't even try when I'm sitting four thousand miles away."

"So we must sail," Reyna said.

"Yeah," Percy said. "And we gotta sail soon." His eyes turned to Jason. "We need to make a stop before Olympus. Gaea has captured Nico di Angelo. I think we need to free him."

There was an outburst of shock at his words, and Hazel felt the pit of her stomach drop out. In all her haste and excitement about meeting Greek demigods, seeing someone who looked exactly like Sammy Valdez introduce himself to her, and being included on this secret council session that she had completely forgotten her brother Nico. Her brother, who was imprisoned by the mother of all monsters in a place that none of them could identify or locate. The horror and shame she suddenly felt erased all of the pleasure and importance Hazel had been experiencing mere seconds before.

Reyna was among those who appeared less than aware. "How d'you know this, Percy?"

"Gaea told us," Percy answered.

"Gaea told you," Reyna repeated incredulously. Percy nodded. "And you… just took her at her word?"

"She wouldn't gain anything by lying," Percy replied. "And Nico's been absent since before we left on our quest. None of the Romans have seen him, and none of the Greeks have seen him. In such a monumental time, especially with him—because he travels between this world and the Underworld—he'd be bound to make an appearance."

"And he hasn't contacted me," Hazel added. She felt all of the eyes in the room turn to her, and her voice disappeared into her chest like a rocket. She swallowed, reminding herself that she had earned her right to sit at this table, and that she owed it to Nico when she had completely forgotten about him before. "He would have checked up, at least, to see that I was okay after the quest, and I haven't seen hide nor hair of him since we left."

A centurion spoke up, a girl from the Fourth Cohort named Linda. "Why is Nico di Angelo important enough for us to divert from the quest to save him?"

Percy looked down the table at her, blinking. "With the exception of Hazel, he is the only living child of Hades. I am the only son of Poseidon and Jason is the only son of Zeus." He shrugged, obviously trying to pass off the arrogance of the statement as he added, "We're the three most powerful demigods of our time, children of the Big Three. If our quest is as important as it seems, it might come in handy to have a son of Hades by your side. Besides, he's your ally. He's our friend. We owe it to him to rescue him."

Octavian stirred down the table. "Nico is an ally of the camp, but we are Roman. It is expected that we abandon hope if it means that our battles will be won. If diverting to rescue him means that we lose an advantage upon the enemy, it is a cost that's not worth paying."

Percy's expression darkened. Hazel watched it turn from friendly and understanding to offended and upset. "He deserves better than a tactical analysis. And what if he's the seventh demigod? What if we leave him to Gaea then?"

"Don't jump to conclusions," Octavian retorted coldly. "It could be any of us. It could be Reyna." His grin clearly said, _It could be me._

"Or Annabeth," Piper crowed back, sounding enough of a defense to create opposition between the two sides. A series of murmurs erupted between the sides, each one stating how a different demigod could be the seventh of the prophecy.

After a moment, Reyna held up her hand for silence. "Enough. Whether or not we try to rescue Nico or identify the seventh demigod is moot unless we set off on the quest in the first place. I think it's agreed by all of us that we need to leave immediately."

Jason and Percy nodded simultaneously. Jason said, "As soon as possible. Leo?"

"If we can resupply here we should be ready to go by the morning," Leo said, nodding. "If that's cool with you guys. I'd rather not push her engines by leaving today."

"That's acceptable," Reyna affirmed.

"How long will it take us to cross the Pacific?" Annabeth asked.

"We'll cross the Pacific?" Reyna said immediately. "Why?"

Annabeth blinked, and Hazel thought she was deliberately looking down upon the Roman praetor. "It's the quickest way to Greece from here. If we skirt the Indonesian islands and cross the Indian Ocean as well, we won't have to cross land until the Suez Canal. Then it would simply be across the Mediterranean to Greece."

"But crossing America again will take us back across the path of the migration of civilization," Reyna argued. "Many aspects of Roman culture—and Greek, too—will be able to meet us and guide us in our path."

Annabeth's gray eyes flashed particularly stormy. "We just crossed America from New York to get here. The land is in turmoil. Monsters are everywhere. You don't want to go back over that. Or would you rather trek right over land that is sworn by creation to our enemy?"

The anger in Reyna seeped into her voice. "Why would you cross water that has never been friendly to Rome?"

Annabeth swung a hand out and nearly caught her boyfriend in the eye. "Percy can control the water. Jason can control the skies. If we cross the ocean, we won't have any worry for anything attacking us from below. You have nothing to fear from us, or the ocean."

Hazel was pretty sure the air between the two girls crackled with energy. She glanced at Jason, checking for lightning bolts. Finally, Reyna seemed to release her breath through clenched teeth. "Very well. We'll cross the ocean, and we'll leave tomorrow morning."

"We don't have the room to take everybody," Jason said, clearly trying to change the subject off the suspiciously intense argument.

"You, Percy, and I will decide," Reyna replied. She suddenly looked tired. "We must pick our people and prepare to leave in a very short time. There's much to do."

She glanced at Annabeth, who was apparently still seething, and then stared across the table at your sister. "Hylla, you, too must decide who will come and who will stay."

Hylla nodded. "It won't be a problem. We'll be ready by the morning."

"I assume we'll decide about Nico later, then," Percy said, earning a glare from half of the table. Annabeth included.

"We'll decide everything, later," Reyna said. "For now, the praetors and I must go to private council to decide who to take with us. If that's all, at least for the time being, I'll arrange for barracks to be prepared for our Greek _guests_." She laid out the word plainly, and as she did so she stared straight into the mass of her centurions, as if she had lingering doubt that the Greek demigods were welcome. "Until the morning, then. Council adjourned."

She rose immediately and stalked out. Jason smiled across the table to his Greek friends, Hazel saw, and then at her and Frank, and then quickened to follow. All around her, the mass was departing, either already discussing who would be chosen or frantically gossiping about the argument between Annabeth and Reyna. Ulterior motive was the suspected ignition for the event, Hazel gathered. Percy rose, as well, and laid his hand on Annabeth's arm, saying something Hazel couldn't hear in the ensemble. She mumbled something back beneath her voice without looking at him, and he slumped off after Reyna and Jason, clearly disappointed. She wondered again what the sudden friction was between them.

Then she glanced at Leo Valdez, and caught him just as he looked away from her. Her heart stopped, but it wasn't in a necessarily good way, and she felt a solid spire of ice jab through her chest. Unintentionally, she reached over and grasped Frank's hand. He responded immediately, gripping her fingers and giving her a warm smile.

That did nothing to calm her, though, and instead, as she watched Leo climb to his feet with Piper and begin to walk out, she couldn't help but admit to herself that she had a substantial amount of her own friction to deal with. Her brother was missing, she'd just been named a key member of the most important quest of her time, and she still couldn't tell the boy who was holding her hand just how many ghosts were haunting her.

Just another day in the life of a demigod, she supposed.


	3. Chapter 3

**3**

**Fool Me Once, Shame on You; Fool Me Twice, Shame on Pluto**

Percy had slept through a lot in his life. Pain, war, worry, anxiety. He'd realized that it didn't really take much for him to zone out to the point where he could easily drift away into the realm of sleep. Annabeth didn't call him a Seaweed Brain for no reason; he excelled at failing the simplest of mental practices in the easiest of situations. He also excelled at sleeping.

What he didn't excel at, however, was ignoring Tyson's gargantuan-sized snores from the next room, coincidentally which were one of the few things Percy _couldn't_ sleep through.

The son of Poseidon lay on his bed in the barrack that had been set aside specially for him and his brother. Usually, Reyna had detailed—not without suggestion—that praetors usually shared a barracks. With separate rooms, of course. She had only seemingly somewhat reluctantly divulged that detail. Under the circumstances, Percy had vouched for his brother and they had been relegated to a two-room guest barrack, furnished with beds instead of cots and bunks. He didn't complain.

Until now.

He sighed. Not that Tyson could have heard him—a hurricane would have been lost in the colossal thunder that was his cyclops brother's snores. Percy wasn't sure if he could have, or would have slept anyway; a thousand thoughts were rolling through his head, each one as important and troublesome as the last. Fortunately, it was the dead of night, and as Tyson was pretty wiped out from the battle, Percy would probably have the entire night to think.

After the meeting, Reyna had been all business, and slightly angry about it, as well. For reasons Percy couldn't fathom, her argument with Annabeth seemed to have ignited a great fury within her that she tried to resolve by being excessively bossy and productive. Within minutes, she had established that Jason's absence and the subsequent election of Percy meant that Percy had supreme precedent as praetor, which didn't seem to be an issue. She immediately dove into the list of centurions, then, and practically ordered the helpless sons of the Big Three to agree with her choices. When her matters were concluded and the sleeping arrangements of their guests had been significantly managed, she had stormed out without another word to attend to her own affairs, leaving Percy and Jason behind to become acquainted and resolve any issues she had ignored.

Her argument with Annabeth troubled Percy, too. More so the fact that Annabeth seemed suddenly put out with him. The momentary euphoria she had seemed to have upon first seeing him obviously wore off quickly. At the meeting, she barely acknowledged his presence and when he tried to speak with her afterward he hardly got a response at all.

"I don't know how long this will take," he had said.

"Whenever," she had replied, eyes far away from his, no matter how desperately he was searching. "See you later."

Her bluntness and apparent indifference hurt him. He had too much pride to admit it to anyone but himself, but it hurt him all the same. Eight months where her face had been his only consolation, the one thread he held onto when it seemed like he was dangling over a giant pit of cold blackness... and after a few short smiles and hugs, a mask got thrown up that he hadn't seen since before they'd gotten together.

Percy wasn't one to jump to conclusions, but all of a sudden he wondered if his perception of Annabeth were off from the truth, just from a simple few moments of obscurity. Perhaps he had exaggerated over months of wilderness and desperate survival the feelings for him that he had observed in her. Maybe, upon seeing him again, she'd realized that she didn't feel the same for him that she had before. Perhaps the life he'd momentarily imagined them having in haven had been too good to be true...

These depressing thoughts happened to be crossing his mind at the exact moment that his wide-open eyes were staring at the pitch-black outline of the door to the barrack, and so he was fortunate enough to watch it silently open in the night.

Percy tensed instantly, his hand shooting to the pocket of the bland pj pants the Romans had provided. He felt Riptide in his palm, and prepared to snap off the cap at a moment's notice, should he need to defend himself against this intruder. He didn't move, hardly dared to breathe, watching the door slowly twist wider in the dark and thanking the gods and Tyson that he had been awake at this precious moment.

The door stopped in its inward movement, frozen in space. For a second, nothing happened, and then the door immediately began to close again, just as slowly. Percy watched, unmoving, in confusion, as it returned to the closed position simply, as if nothing had disturbed it in the first place.

His confusion was mingled with relief, and although he couldn't explain the mysterious happening he began to relax. His hold on Riptide loosened, at the same time as a shadowy figure materialized in the center of the room, three paces away.

Percy yelped and grabbed Riptide again, uncapping it and drawing it from his pocket in a flawless, single motion. He rolled over in the bed fluidly, jamming his back against the wall as he raised his sword up to swipe, ready from whatever attack was doubtlessly seconds away.

The ensuing pause between Percy and the figure was so long that Percy nearly made to strike in the dark. At the last moment, the figure's arms dropped unthreateningly to their side, and the shape in its right hand outlined itself into a familiar-looking baseball cap. A special, magically-powered baseball cap.

Percy released his breath in a gigantic whoosh and lowered Riptide. "Oh my gods... you scared me half-to-death."

"I'm sorry," Annabeth replied meekly. Her figure, which Percy slowly began to recognize as her own, drooped in accordance.

"It's fine," he said, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and standing up. "Just, maybe knock next time? I could have run you through with Riptide."

"Sorry," she repeated, no less dejected. "I figured you'd be sleeping."

"I don't sleep through artillery strikes," Percy said, gesturing towards the door to Tyson's room as he stood. Mrs. O'Leary's dormant growls were nearly as loud and fearsome as those when she was awake, contributing to the buffet of nighttime sound waves.

"I couldn't sleep, either," she murmured in the dark. For some reason, Percy doubted she slept next to a cyclops, too.

He capped Riptide and stepped around her gingerly to lock the door. The action was to make sure that no one impeded on his privacy and night the same as Annabeth had, but Percy belatedly realized that it looked like he meant to lock them in rather than keep others out. Before she could get the wrong impression, he stammered, "You're about the only person I don't mind coming unwelcomed to my cabin at night."

That didn't help him at all. Poor choice of words.

He quickly tried to cover it up again, but he didn't get the chance. As he strode back to her she reached for him and wrapped her arms around his torso, burying her head in his chest just as she had that afternoon on the battlefield. Surprised, perplexed, but relieved all the same, Percy quickly returned his pen to his pocket and put his own arms around her, holding her somewhat tensely.

They stood like that for a few moments, listening to a million cannons fire in the next room in their familiar yet slightly awkward embrace, until Annabeth seemed to notice how stiff he was standing.

She pulled back only enough to look him in the eyes. "What's wrong?"

Percy blinked back at her, and carefully pulled out of her arms with a soft sigh. "You're confusing me, Annabeth. I haven't seen you in eight months; I was ripped away from you just when we were getting used to having each other as someone special. Then you get off this freaking giant ship that was built by a demigod I've never met with his bare hands and hug me and stay with me in front of everybody. Then at the council you barely look at me, and now you come to my barracks in the middle of the night and jump into my arms again. I'm sorry, but you're gonna have to detail this for me."

In the dark, he watched Annabeth wrap her arms around herself reclusively and sit down at the edge of his bed. "Sorry. I shouldn't have ignored you at the meeting."

Percy waited for her to continue. She didn't. "That's it?"

Her gray eyes snapped up to look into his from where she sat, and a bristle of anger appeared behind them. "What else do you want me to say?"

Quickly becoming defensive, Percy took a step backwards and dramatized a shrug. "Well, excuse me. I'm trying to figure out what's going on. You're not acting like you. I can get the ignoring me part, but the argument with Reyna? What was that about? And you were almost gonna bite off Octavian's head, too."

"I'm confrontational," she replied in a lower voice. "You know that."

"But not like this," Percy said. "You're confrontational in a these-are-the-facts-and-we-need-a-good-plan kind of way, not a this-is-how-it-should-be-and-I-refuse-to-hear-your-side-of-it. And then first you're on me like glue, and then you can't even look at me, and now you're back to glue. What's going on, Annabeth?"

There was an abrupt and complete silence. Tyson chose that moment to roll over or something, and for a precious second there were no snores. Their returning wave nearly knocked Percy off his feet, but he was still able to finally hear Annabeth reply, "I don't want to talk about it."

Percy threw up his arms and tried not to growl. Sometimes, his girlfriend was frustrating. Now, when her status as his girlfriend seemed tenuous at best, their misbalance of understanding was starting to scare him. Eight months apart couldn't have changed them _that_ much... could it? "I'm tired of not talking about things. I didn't talk with you for months, and that almost killed me. I never talked about doing the thing with the River Styx, and that _really_almost killed me. I don't want to not talk about this until it _does_ kill me."

He took a step closer to her, and saw now that she was trembling. Her head tipped upwards, and her eyes found his again. Her voice was a whisper. "Seaweed Brain..."

The waver in her voice tipped him over the edge. He tackled her. Her back hit the mattress with a small boom that was lost in the torrent of snores from the other room. As they toppled through the short distance of air that was between their original position and the sheets, her hands seized up in his shirt and held their ground, grabbing up no small amount of flesh in their grip as well.

He lowered his head and met the lips that were already on a frantic ascent to meet his. They both whimpered as their mouths made the contact they had been desperately deprived of for months.

Their initial contact of bliss transformed rapidly into a competition of who could devour the other's lips faster. They'd never kissed like this before—they'd never furiously made out on a bed before, either—but suddenly it seemed second nature and neither of them was anywhere close to shoving the other away.

Percy broke away only when he couldn't breathe any longer, which was no short amount of time. Annabeth's hands had wound themselves in his hair, and her eyes were wild and stormy. They were both panting, and mirrored in their expressions was a massive hunger that had been building up for the better part of a year. The furious passion of the moment was just about enough to make Percy forget about their confrontation of a moment before.

But only just.

Before temptation could grip him again, he propped himself up on his hands, as far away from her as his thumping heart would allow him to get. Annabeth moaned in protest and tried to pull him back down, but he resisted. Barely. "What's going on? Seriously. Why are you acting so strange?"

He dipped his head to brush a kiss across her lips, trying to coax her into responding. She shuddered beneath him, trying and failing to catch him again before he retreated to a safe distance. "It's nothing, Percy. I swear..."

"You swear..." he repeated. He pointed at himself. "Not buying it."

"Seriously. Please..."

"No," Percy murmured. Did he mention that Annabeth was frustrating? "The hell it's nothing. The hell you're serious. Tell me right now. Why are you acting like everyone in this camp is your enemy?"

"Because they have been for centuries?"

"Annabeth."

"Percy..."

"Tell me. Please."

She hesitated again, but he could tell that she was succumbing at the same time. The vice she had on his hair and loosened and her hands ran down the side of his face, tracing the line of his chin and moving down to his chest. "I... It..." She stopped, sighed, and took a deep breath. "You were gone eight months, Percy."

"We've established that."

"Yeah, I know. I know. But... for the first month, I figured no problem. Second month... yeah, you'd still be waiting. But then it was a third month, and then a fourth, and... I started to think that, if you didn't remember anything in the first place the same as Jason didn't... maybe you'd forgotten about me. Maybe you'd met another girl. She might've made you forget about me entirely."

Percy listened to her words and tried to digest them at the same time, an operation that seriously overtaxed his brain. It took him a moment to realize what she was saying, and he couldn't help the completely incredulous look his face adopted upon enlightenment. He wasn't sure if she saw it in the dark or not, but his perplexity was remarkable. "I told you. I always remembered you, even when I couldn't remember anything else. Everything that I was doing, I was doing because I thought it meant if I succeeded I'd find you again."

"Yeah, well, tell that to my head, Percy."

"I just did-"

"Shut up." She shuddered again beneath him, but this time it felt like she was releasing a pent-up state of despair, rather than her previous instance of pleasure. "It doesn't change how worried I was about it on the inside. And I was mad at myself for feeling that way, and not worrying just about your safety. And then we got here, and I was so relieved and overjoyed that you were safe and I was with you."

"Then why still ignore me at the council?"

"Because," Annabeth said feebly. Percy stared at her for half a second before she relented again. Her hands slid underneath the hem of his shirt, making it difficult for Percy to concentrate on her words as she ran them over the stringy muscles of his chest. "Reyna."

Percy waited for her to elaborate. He hoped his confusion was as clear to her as it was to him, because one name didn't mean anything to him. "What... what about Reyna? Did she piss you off of something when I wasn't looking?"

"Percy," Annabeth mumbled. "Eight months. And Piper had the right word... Reyna's _gorgeous_."

He blinked. "And?" She pinched him beneath his shirt. It hurt. "Ow! What the heck was that for?"

"Percy!" Annabeth cried, her eyes wide in apparent exasperation. "You're hot! She's hot! Hot things attract, and I wasn't there anymore."

Suddenly, a million seconds late, the pieces to the puzzle clicked in Percy's head. Staring down at Annabeth, as if for the first time realizing that her knees were grazing the outsides of his thighs and her hands were tracing the outlines of his pectoral muscles, Percy grinned. "You were jealous."

She pinched him again, groaning. "I wasn't _jealous_. I was just worried."

"You were jealous," Percy said, enjoying the moment.

"Fine!" Her hands left his chest and shirt in an instant, and she crossed her arms over her chest. "Fine. I was jealous. I got mad when she seemed to be bossing everyone around and even madder when she tried to boss me around and tell me how everything should be. Then I didn't talk to you because you were leaving the council with her and not me."

"It wasn't _my_fault."

"Whatever," she said.

He cocked his head. "You're not the jealous type."

She narrowed her eyes. She'd done it before; it was a motion that was clearly intended to make him realize how stupid he was. "_Eight months_, Percy."

He grinned wider. "There's nothing between me and Reyna. Everyone knows I already have a girlfriend, and I am universally happy with the girlfriend I have. Besides, Reyna has nothing on you. And she'd probably want to be on top, anyway—control, and all that."

If looks could kill...

"I was kidding!" Percy laughed.

Annabeth wasn't amused, but she didn't say anything. Her hands just shot up from her chest and gripped Percy by the shirt, seizing and tearing him down to her in one motion. Their lips crashed together with the force of a Zeus-thrown lightning bolt and locked together in a fight to the moisturized death.

This time, with his question temporarily settled, he had no reason to stop, and Annabeth was clearly in no mood to postpone their flood of affection. This time, when he needed air, he didn't pull away. He ripped his mouth from hers and trailed it along her chin, more uncharted territory but whose waters he was desperate to explore. Roman culture gave him unexpected courage.

Between the kisses he systematically laid across her jaw, he murmured, "We're about to be in a war with mother earth herself, fighting giants that require both demigods _and_ gods to destroy, and your biggest concern was that I had associated once or twice with a pretty girl since the last time we'd been together?"

Her skin was coated with goosebumps, and she was shivering. It couldn't have been from cold, because their bodies were searing and her eyes were closed. "I have troubles with priorities when it comes to you, okay?"

He reached her neck and continued his journey, brushing his lips over her impossibly soft skin and reveling in how she threw her arms around his neck and moaned ever so lightly into his ear. Before he could dally too far and lose control of himself he returned to her lips, which he kissed tenderly instead of the rough hacks of a moment before.

Her grip on his body only intensified, and he felt his own body shudder as her legs snapped up and wrapped themselves around his waist. Before he could react, her hands grabbed the fabric around his neck and drew his shirt over his head, their lips separating just long enough for it to disappear. He could feel the release of his control tipping over the edge of the cliff, a shimmer the only thing separating respect and completely losing all containment of his desire.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," he murmured against her lips. "Annabeth. Hormonal teenage boy right here."

"Hello. Hormonal teenage girl right here."

"Annabeth..." He fought himself. Hard. He could barely keep his hands off her as it was. "I don't think you want to do this. Not now. Not tonight. Not with my brother snoring like a... well, a cyclops a room over. Not in the middle of a Roman camp. Not the night before we set off on the greatest and most dangerous quest of our time."

Their lips broke apart, and their eyes met instead, dancing inches away from each other as their noses touched. "What if there's no other now, Percy?"

"If we do this, you'll regret it," he breathed, hardly daring to take another lungful after shedding the last. "I promise you you'll regret it. This isn't the time or the place. I got a head full of kelp, I'll give that to you, but I'm right about this. There will be another time, I swear to you, but it's not now."

For a long moment, the only sound was their softly-panting breaths. Except for, you know, the shelling that was occurring a room over. So, really, they couldn't even hear themselves breathing. They stared into each others' eyes, though, and Percy couldn't help but smile at the deviously innocent expression her face had adopted, despite the quite provocative position they found themselves in. After a pause, she reached up and began to trace his features again, her hands as soft as a dryad's song against his face.

"Okay, Seaweed Brain," she whispered to him. "But someday I had better get a 'now'."

Percy leaned down and kissed her once. "I promise you will."

"It's late," Annabeth said, as if only suddenly she had realized that it was the middle of the night. "We're leaving in only a few hours. We should really get at least a little sleep before the morning." As if grudgingly accepting the inevitable, Percy watched her will her arms into beginning the extraction process from his body.

He heard himself, rather than told himself to, blurt, "Do you want to stay?"

She froze. Percy immediately wondered if he'd gone too far, which would have been weird, seeing as they'd nearly gone all the way only a minute beforehand without an issue. The pause only lasted long enough for her to sigh. Percy hoped it was a content sigh. "Yeah. I would like that."

Carefully, doing his best not to crush her with his body weight, he flipped them over with altering their intertwining. She shifted, moving from straddling him to letting herself drape over his right side. Her right arm landed to rest on his chest, her fingers tracing meaningless patterns on his chest. She rested her head over his pectoral muscle and smiled at him genuinely and sleepily, easing herself into comfort.

Percy smiled back and her eyes slid closed. He slid his right arm so it rested across her back, pulling her close to him. A day ago, he was in Alaska, slaying the greatest giant of all time. Today he created the most powerful union in pretty much the history of mankind, and he was about to set off on the greatest quest the world had ever known. Yet what Percy Jackson was happiest about was the fact that Annabeth Chase had consented to sleeping in his bed, beside him, leaning into him, curled up to him because she wanted to be. The smile she'd given him before her eyes closed stayed as her breathing slowed in a matter of minutes, and remained long after she'd drifted into sleep.

Percy watched her for a while, wondering what Athena was saying if she'd been watching. At all. If so, he was probably dead, which wasn't that good. Then again, he reminded himself, the gods needed him, too, and there were several that wouldn't allow the goddess of wisdom to effect furious vengeance upon him. He decided that even if he had been going to die for being with Annabeth tonight, it was worth it.

He let his eyes close, and to his utter surprise, he disappeared into the realm of sleep instantly.

Hazel Levesque, on the other hand, was having a great deal of difficulty reaching slumber. She had no significant other sneaking into her cabin in the middle of the night, although she wouldn't have minded, and no cyclops sibling snorting earthquakes in the next room.

A face danced across her vision, though, every time she closed her eyes, and it made her shake in her bunk, trying to ignore it but always knowing it would be there no matter how hard she tried to erase it from her mind. It was teasing her. Torturing her. She tried to bat it away with thought but it struck back with a strength she couldn't muster in defense, and although she tried not to she finally gave up.

Hazel sat up on her bunk, trying not to be noisy as she did so. Her fellows of the Fifth Cohort weren't having her difficulties sleeping. Snores echoed in waves throughout the complex, of many different pitches and frequencies. Across from her bunk, Frank had rolled up onto his side and was humming softly in his sleep. Drool coated his pillow. He looked rather cute, and Hazel couldn't help but smile.

Swinging her legs over the side of her bunk she dropped her bare feet into her boots and stood up. Grabbing her jacket from where it hung on a hook at the end of the cot, she snuck along the rows of sleeping campers as quietly as possible. In silence she unlocked and slipped through the door to the barracks, lightly closing it behind her and setting off aimlessly into the night.

It was cloudless night, and the stars were shining. The Big Dipper rested above the lake, but the moon was absent, either set or yet to rise. The air was colder than Hazel had expected, and she pulled the jacket tight around her small frame as she walked. The chill helped to clear her mind somewhat, piercing her consciousness with its reality. It allowed her to focus on the fact that she would be leaving camp in a few hours for the second time in a week, and that she was dead tired but couldn't sleep.

Her feet carried her, mostly of their own accord and not of her sleepy mind, through the entanglement of buildings and barracks and out towards the lake. Towards open ground, open air. By instinct she scooped up a shining blue gem off of the ground the second it popped from the ground, barely even breaking stride. The stars were so bright that they reflected off the lake and gave a startling spectrum of beauty, and Hazel didn't want to miss the rare sight on account of picking up random precious rocks. Her mood was already close to dramatic collapse. She really wanted to enjoy whatever things she could at the moment. Life was about to get a lot more dangerous. Treacherous. Horrifying.

As she walked, her arms loosely wrapped around her chest, her eyes traveled across the plains, where the mountain ranges rimmed the camp, to the city glittering in the night behind her and the lights of the coliseum glowing in the distance.

Her gaze found the ship of the Greeks, resting on the plains where it had landed, and her feet stopped dead.

The ship was even majestic in its sleep. It sat in silence but for the creaking of its deck plates as it swayed gently to and fro in the night wind. The metallic wings it no-doubt used for stabilization in flight were folded into the sides, the sails battened down and secured. The metal shone so bright in the night that the distant stars reflected the sky on its dark hull, throwing a majestic and startling diagram of the cosmos back at her.

She stood simply, staring at it, finding herself unable to move. This ship mesmerized her; she couldn't find it in herself to take a step while she watched it. Deep inside of her, she knew that it wasn't the ship that captured her, but the knowledge of who built it, and how terrified of her entire situation she felt every time her thoughts drifted anywhere near the general vicinity of such subjects.

This was ridiculous; it was a freaking ship. _Walk, idiot, walk._

She spurred her feet into motion, not without difficulty, trying to focus on anything to make her feet work. The blades of grass, the cold wind biting at her skin, Frank—that was a good thought—as long as she would move, instead of staring at this ship.

Intense thinking meant she wasn't looking down, which means she wasn't taking care where she stepped. She'd walked this field a hundred times before; there was no need to watch her step. In this instance, however, it meant that Hazel hadn't noticed the dark shape lying on the ground in front of her until her right foot knocked into it and locked beneath her.

With a yelp, she toppled over the shape, falling over into the grass just as it pitched into a short hill. She tried to stop her fall by bracing her arms, but they skirted easily over the grass and she rolled head over heels for several seconds before coming to a stop at the bottom of the hill. Terrified at what she'd tripped over, she whirled around.

A swear word erupted into the night. The shape rose from the ground, silhouetted in blackness against the starscape behind it. It began to move towards her, and she backed up, her heart racing. Abruptly, it stopped, as if it realized that it was threatening.

"Shit," it said. She recognized the voice. "I'm sorry... I didn't think... Are you okay? I'm really sorry."

She took a deep shuddering breath as Leo Valdez took another few cautionary steps in her direction, holding his arms up in a helpless and harmless gesture. Unbidden, her heart began to race faster. The threat was gone, but for some reason encountering Leo Valdez in the middle of the night in a field out of camp was even worse for her.

"What were you doing?" Hazel cried, trying to gain a grip on her body processes.

Leo stopped moving, the shape of his head drooping somewhat in the dark. "Sorry... I was sleeping. I didn't think about anyone coming out here, and... yeah."

"You were sleeping?" Hazel replied skeptically. "Out here? In the middle of the night?"

One of Leo's hands raised and he scratched his head. His voice was hesitant. "Uh... yeah. Kinda. Yeah. Weird, I know."

Hazel couldn't help herself. "...Why?"

"Uh..." Leo hesitated again, then his other arm raise itself and pointed behind her. She turned again to behold the _Argo II_, still sitting brilliantly in the field. "That's my baby. I couldn't sleep in the barracks 'cause I'm worried she'll just fall apart on me. First voyage and all, you know. It just puts me at ease to be out here, where I can keep an eye on her."

Hazel finally managed to get her breath under control. Leo took a few steps closer tentatively, obviously afraid that she was scared of him. Probably an intelligent thought, seeing as she was, although it wasn't for the reasons that were crossing his mind.

That entire array of intellect was something Hazel didn't want to explore. To prevent it from entering that region before it had even come close, she quickly said, "I'm sorry for tripping over you. I should've been paying attention."

"Nah, it's cool. I just... Hazel, right? I'm Leo."

He was close enough now that she could make out his face, and he halted a few paces away. Her eyes inconspicuously raked up and down his body, before she could stop herself. He was older than Sammy had been, obviously, but she was startled how similar they looked, from head to toe. Except that Leo was wearing some of the dirtiest jeans she'd ever seen and had on a shirt that said '_You want to bang with my hammer?_' and had the sleeves torn off. His bare arms were tanned and rough in the starlight.

Ignoring the innuendo of the shirt, she noticed his lack of clothing with surprise. "Yeah, I'm Hazel. Aren't you cold?"

As if realizing for the first time that he wasn't wearing a parka, he glanced down at his arms and blinked, looking up to her only after a moment with understanding in his eyes. "Oh, that. No. Kind of a long story."

Hazel shuddered uneasily, trying to hide it and simultaneously wrapping her arms tighter around herself to pass it off as chill in the wind. "Okay."

Leo visibly reconsidered. "Actually not. My dad's Hephaestus. Every once in a while, a kid of his comes along who can control fire, and all that." He held his arms out in a modest gesture and dropped them again to his sides. "I'm it." He shrugged. "Cold doesn't really affect me anymore, since I can, you know, just summon a blaze whenever I want to warm me up. My skin's really hot, anyway. Werewolf Jacob hot, if you know what I mean."

Hazel had absolutely no idea what he meant. Werewolf Jacob meant nothing to her, but she nodded as if she did out of fear of things she didn't know and couldn't explain. She paused for a moment. "So you can control fire?"

He laughed, but it was dry and, insulting his nature, cold. "Sorta." He spoke as if the words held a story beneath them, a story that he didn't want to share—or even remember—and one Hazel wouldn't ask about even if they were already friends. She was chocked that she had to remind herself that they weren't.

While these thoughts danced through her head, Leo cocked his head to the side. "You cold?"

Her hands shot to her sides faster than she could have dropped them. "No."

"It's okay," Leo said. From his hip, he snapped his fingers and a flame erupted on his index finger. Hazel was so startled she took a step backwards, ready to scream. Instead, she watched as the fire engulfed his entire hand and stopped at his wrist. He didn't yell or cry out in agony, only watched it carefully. The dancing light illuminated a soft grin on his face. After a moment, he held it out towards her. "Here. Warm your hands up."

Hazel hesitated, afraid for more than one reason. Here was a boy two years older than her whom she'd never met before that morning, who looked just like a best friend she'd had seventy years before, who had her basically at his mercy in the middle of a field with unknown intentions and was grinning at her with a seeming courtesy as if it was his greatest joy in the world to offer her to warm herself by the fire licking the flesh of his hands. She couldn't decide why he was doing it; she had never imagined him being this friendly. Although Sammy had been.

She kicked herself. What a thought to have at a moment like this.

Nevertheless, after a slow moment, where he just stood patiently grinning at her, as if expecting her hesitance, she stepped closer and untucked her hands from her sleeves. "Thanks," she murmured, holding her hands up to the light. The effect was instantaneous, warm spreading throughout her body from the fire as he turned his hand over, staring at it. "That doesn't hurt?"

"Nope," he said, his grin only widening. "Sometimes it tickles a bit, depending on which part of me is on fire, but for the most part, it's all good."

After a moment, feeling significantly warmer but not less uncomfortable, Hazel retreated a step and folded her arms again, feeling insecure. "Thanks."

His grin grew into a full smile, and he nodded, turning towards his ship. He was taller than Sammy. Stronger. The muscles on his arms flexed as he pointed at the _Argo II_. Despite the increased temperature of her body, she shivered; she didn't know why. "I was worried that the wind might get strong enough to tip her over, even though we spent a month making sure the supports we built would keep it from doing that. But the mountain range seems to be a natural buffer, so we parked in the perfect place."

"It's a beautiful ship," Hazel replied honestly. Leo didn't reply. His smile didn't disappear either, though. She wondered if he was always this friendly. Slowly, she was beginning to relax. He was so much like her old friend, the friend that had started to become more than her friend. Their similarities weren't restricted to looks, it would seem, but to their personality traits as well.

She snapped her head back towards the ship, realizing that she should be staring at it rather than the boy next to her. Her gaze must have looked wistful as she appreciated the architecture and skill that must have gone into designing and building it, for a moment after Leo's eyes turned briefly to hers, he asked, "Do you want to see it?"

Truthfully, she didn't know. She didn't like boats. She wasn't very fond of water, at all. But this was a _flying_ ship. And she would be leaving on it in the morning, anyway. So, instead, she tried to smile and said, "Sure."

Beaming, Leo lead the way across the fields, beginning to articulate aspects about it in a way that was so modest and humble Hazel nearly felt inclined to yell at him to show off. His voice was soft and kind, and he maintained a respectful distance from her, as if he realized that proximity made her uneasy.

"It took us two months just to smelt all of the hull plating," he said when they had reached its side. He reached up over his head knocked on the side of the vessel, resulting in a tremendous ringing noise that echoed throughout the ship. It rested about a meter off the ground, bobbing gently on the stabilizers of its landing gear. "Another to put it on. It took a _lot_ of effort. I'm really glad it all came together."

"Me, too," Hazel said without thinking, and nearly clamped a hand over her mouth physically. Before Leo could even realize what she'd said, she changed the subject. "Son of Hephaestus? The Greek god of forging?"

"And fire, yeah," he answered, her confession already forgotten. "And you're Pluto's daughter, right? Equivalent to Hades?"

"Sort of. He's other things here, too. In Rome, he was the god of the earth, too, and all the riches and rocks and stuff that came with it... yeah." Hazel stopped talking. She didn't want to think about what came out of the earth. She avoided his eyes, carefully.

"So is he like the anti-Gaea?" Leo asked.

The question was a shock, but she managed to keep her face straight. "No. Gaea is mother earth herself. Pluto is still the god of the Underworld, and he has some power over the earth, but he still can only control the stuff in it. Gaea's powers, I think, are on the earth itself. But I don't know much. I've never... I haven't seen my father in a long time." Seventy-years-long time.

"That sucks," Leo said honestly. "I don't see my father much, either." He hesitated, then, and raised a hand to rub the back of his neck. "Look, am I bothering with all of this? 'Cause I don't want to bore you and you can just go, you know. Don't feel like you _need_ to see this."

"What? No, this is fine. Why do you think I'm bothered?"

"Your face is _really_ pale, girl."

Hazel chastised herself, for having no control over her emotions, letting it show on her skin. Desperately, she shook her head. "No. I'm fine. Really. I just don't necessarily like boats. But this doesn't go in the water anyway so I should be okay."

It wasn't a lie; it wasn't the truth, either. But Leo seemed to accept it and nod it away. "Okay," he said. "I was just worried that I was scaring you. Is it me? I can go away, if you want me to."

_It's not you. It's me._ "No, I'm sorry. Please stay."

"Okay. Sorry if you're uncomfortable. Maybe you should go back to the barracks, if you're cold or sleepy or something. We are leaving early tomorrow. Or today. Whatever."

They kept walking, along the ship towards the stern, where the engines were. Hazel shuddered again. "No. I like talking to someone. It makes the situation seem a whole lot less scary."

Leo paused, seemingly to gather his thoughts before he nodded. "I know what you mean. You wanna know a secret?"

She nodded.

"I don't wanna do this," he said. "I don't wanna go on this quest. I feel like I already did my part." He spread his arms towards the _Argo II_. "There's my contribution. There you go. I'm no good fighting monsters and taking on earth goddesses. I'm terrified. I'm really afraid I'm going to just end up getting in the way. And someone'll get hurt."

Hazel thought about his words, and shook her head. "You're one of the most powerful demigods of our time. They said that today at the meeting. You heard them. You wouldn't be along on this quest if you didn't have a place on it."

Leo smiled. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. _I_ don't have a place on it. All I can do is..." She froze her words, trying to maintain the work of her feet. "...um, know when things die. That's not very helpful, especially on a mission where killing things is a given."

Leo carefully reached a hand over and patted her on the shoulder. She didn't flinch. When his hand was gone, she missed it. The change in body attitude was shocking. "Well, you're my friend now. So you most definitely have a place on this quest, to keep me from getting bored! I'm sure you mean something special, too, anyway. Otherwise you wouldn't be here, right?"

The words made unexpected warmth sprout in her chest. Someone hadn't been able to do that to her since... well, Frank. Frank could do that. But before that it was Sammy, and Sammy was who she thought of right now, standing in the place of this boy named Leo. As they rounded the back of the ship, the couldn't help but wonder if this was some god's laugh—giving her a second chance to be with her friend, even though it was with someone completely different. After a moment, she told herself it didn't matter. Sammy was long dead. Leo was here, and he was being her friend. She ignored all other thoughts besides those two, and tried to focus on that.

She smiled in the dark. "I'm glad I'm your friend, Leo."

He smiled back, his eyes darting towards the ground. "Me, too. What's that?"

She blinked. "What's what?"

"That." He stopped walking and stooped towards the ground, blocking her view for a moment. A second later, he stood back up, examining something he held between two of his fingers.

Hazel's heart stopped dead. Poised carefully in-between his thumb and index finger was a small sapphire, glittering in the stars.

She choked; she couldn't have spoken if she wanted to. Meanwhile, Leo glanced down at her with a wondrous grin and turned the stone over in his hand, gazing dreamily at it. She reached out a hand to snatch it away, but he had already turned his head and arm. "Hey," he said. "There's another one!"

He stepped away from her, a few paces. Her feet were rooted to the ground. She couldn't move. He stooped to the ground several meters away to gather up a large, glittering gem. "No!" she cried out, finally finding her voice. "Leo, drop it! Drop it no—"

It happened so fast. As he regained his full height the massive engine, in which Hazel could have stood straight-up and still had another head of clearance, glowed red hot with sudden energy. A millisecond later there was sound of a thousand gunshots in one and a massive ball of fire erupted from the vent, discharging in a bullet of flame. Hazel was thrown to the ground even from her distance, skin searing from the heat.

The fire didn't harm Leo, of course. The impact of the blast, however, sent him hurtling backwards through the air at the speed of sound. A hundred feet away, a boulder jutted out of the earth as the plains began to make their ascent to the mountain ranges. Leo's body hit the rock, headfirst, traveling quicker than Hazel's eyes could register. It collapsed in a heap at the base.

He was dead long before Hazel could start screaming.


End file.
